When Is It Time to Hire Administrative Help for Your Small Business?
If you’re working longer hours just to keep up with administrative tasks—and still struggling to respond to clients or grow your business—it may be time to get help.
You probably didn’t start your business because you wanted to spend your days sending invoices, updating QuickBooks, or maintaining client records. Those things matter. They keep your business moving. But when they take over your day, the work you started your business to do can get pushed aside.
That’s often where my clients are when they reach out to me.
Your administrative work is crowding out your clients
Invoicing, keeping QuickBooks up to date, maintaining client and membership records, and preparing newsletters all take time. When you’re handling everything yourself, it’s easy for those recurring responsibilities to fill your schedule.
Meanwhile, client emails sit unanswered. Business development gets postponed. You tell yourself you’ll catch up tonight or over the weekend.
One busy week doesn’t necessarily mean you need ongoing support. But if this has become your regular routine, it’s worth looking at what is taking up your time.
Ask yourself:
Am I spending more time managing administrative work than serving my clients?
Are client emails taking longer to answer than I’d like?
Am I putting off opportunities to bring in new business?
Am I regularly working late just to keep everything current?
You don’t have to wait until something goes wrong to make a change.
Look at what doing everything yourself is costing you
“It costs money to make money” is something I often come back to when talking about getting help.
That doesn’t mean hiring support is automatically the right decision for every business. It means looking beyond the hourly expense and considering what your current workload is keeping you from doing.
Start by writing down the tasks you spend your days handling. Include how often you do them and roughly how long they take.
Then consider what you could do with some of that time back. Could you respond to clients sooner? Follow up with a potential client? Give an existing client the attention that helps maintain the relationship?
Freeing up time doesn’t guarantee new revenue. But it gives you room to do the work that can grow your business and retain the clients you already have.
Start with the recurring tasks that take the most time
You don’t need to hand over everything at once.
I usually suggest starting with recurring tasks that take up a substantial part of the owner’s time. Invoicing and keeping QuickBooks current are good examples. Client records and newsletters may be another place to begin, depending on the business.
The right starting point is the work that would make a meaningful difference in your week.
For example, if invoices keep getting pushed to the end of the day, having someone handle the agreed invoicing process can remove one more responsibility you’re carrying around in your head.
We can identify those priorities together. You don’t need to arrive with a perfectly organized task list.
Yes, getting started takes some time
One understandable concern is, “By the time I explain it, I could have done it myself.”
There is an initial time investment. I need to learn your business, understand how you like things done, and ask questions.
But that learning carries forward.
Once I understand the recurring work and your preferences, you don’t have to start from the beginning every time. We build on what I’ve learned and adjust as your needs change.
That’s one of the benefits of working directly with me: you’re building a relationship with someone who gets to know your business over time.
What can change when you have support?
Clients tell me they feel less overwhelmed. They can respond to their clients more quickly and spend more time working on their business instead of trying to keep up with administrative responsibilities.
The work still gets done. The difference is that it no longer all depends on them.
You may need a full-time employee, or you may find that a smaller amount of ongoing administrative support fits your workload. That decision starts with understanding what you need help with. You can also compare employee and administrative support costs with my calculator.
You don’t have to figure it all out before we talk
If administrative work is taking over your days, let’s talk through it.
I provide personal, U.S.-based administrative support, and you work directly with me. Together, we can look at your workload and figure out what I can take off your plate.
You don’t need to know exactly what you need before we talk.
By Sara Baker, founder of Simply Administrative. Helping clients stay organized through personal administrative and business support since 2007.
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